£6million Stradivarius was stuffed in cupboard for 25 years

The Stradivarius violin could sell for as much as $10million (Picture: Getty Images)

One of the rarest violins in the world which was stuffed away in a cupboard for 25 years has gone up for auction and is expected to sell at a whopping $10million (£6million).

It is one of 600 remaining Stradivarius violins – made by Antonio Stradivari in 1731. He is hailed as the greatest violin maker to have ever lived.

The violin was found in the Manhattan apartment of Huguette Clark, a wealthy and reclusive heiress whose family was American royalty during the Gilded Age, and was collecting dust for decades.

The rare violin on display at Christie’s auction house in Hong Kong (Picture: Getty Images)

Clark died in 2011 at the age of 104.

Kerry Keane, head musical instrument specialist at Christie’s auction house, told NBC News: ‘There is a spectacular telegram that her parents sent her in Paris in 1920 that told her when they were sailing and when they would be arriving in New York, and that her mother had just bought her, quote unquote, the most fabulous violin in the world.’

The highest paid price for a Stradivarius was $16million (£9.5million) in 2011 in a charity sale for Japan disaster relief with the Nippon Foundation’s Northeastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund.